


Sunset

by ShadowHaloedAngel



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Friendship/Love, M/M, Midgar, sunset
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-14
Updated: 2012-08-14
Packaged: 2017-11-12 03:19:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/486086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowHaloedAngel/pseuds/ShadowHaloedAngel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes even the most positive people can feel despair, and every ending takes on new significance. Sunsets may mean oncoming darkness, but they are always followed by a sunrise, and a new start. Sometimes, Reeve just needs reminding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sunset

Tseng could never understand Reeve's ability to smile through seemingly everything, but he was glad for it. When he went up to meet the man that evening, then, he was a little concerned to see the engineer sitting on the roof, staring out at the horizon with an expression of unparalleled... melancholy. He didn't think anyone had ever looked so wistful.

These weekly meetings had become an unspoken agreement. They had started coincidentally a few weeks before, when Tseng had escaped from the administrative jungle of his office to taste what passed for real air, and admire the gloriously tainted sky. Midgar sprawled all around and beneath the coronet of the ShinRa tower, magnificent in filth. Pollution made for the most beautiful sunsets, but still they grated. Back in Wutai, he sky had been clear, the sunsets crisp watercolour, the colours not vivid, but iridescent, gentle. In Midgar the hues of the sky were so intense that it felt almost like oil on the skin, uncomfortable and greasy.

He walked out of the stairwell and turned left, away from the helipad, heading instead behind the communications equipment and other structural features scattered in a haphazard maze across the concrete landscape. He had been lost in thgought when a flash of movement startled him out of his reverie. Leaning against the railings, his back to the dark blue shadow, stood Reeve Tuesti, seemingly here for the same reason as Tseng himself. The Turk relaxed - acatually, he didnt mind the Director, even quite liked him.

He approached soundlessly from behind, moving to stand silently beside the other man. Rather than admiring the view, he instead studied Reeve's features, almost subconsciously. He was a Turk. They observed people. It was what they did. There was a strange fire lurking in those gentle brown eyes, a burning passion which Tseng did not understand.

Eventually, the brunette spoke.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?"

Tseng did not reply. In all honesty, beautiful was not a word he would have applied to this sprawling monster of a metropolis beneath them.

The silence did not faze the eingineer, though, and he continued as if there had been no pause in the conversation.

"It's so...alive... it's filthy, and the buildings are ugly, and it reeks of lapsed glory, but it's still /here/, it's still so damn /alive/."

This time the silence was not due to disagreement or skepticism, but to confusion. He had never seen the city that way before, only compared it to Wutai, defining Midgar by its flaws alone. At that moment, though, he began to see it for its beauty, however grime encrusted that might be.

At long last, the other turned to him, smiling softly.

"I'm sorry, I get the feeling I am unintentionally disturbing your solitude. I'll leave you be..."

He turned to go, but Tseng touched his arm, shaking his head.

"Everyone is entitled to a refuge. I understand why you might come here. There's no need to leave."

Another pause, a nod, and the man turned back to the railings once more, the silence comfortable, undemanding.

And so they had found themselves up there together at the end of every week. Occasionally the night was spent in comfortable silence, and other times in animated conversation. Once they had brought a picnic up with them, and eaten beneath the sunset and the stars. Reeve was always smiling, though, always optimistic and positive, and so to see this seemingly incongruous sadness worried Tseng more than he would have liked to say. He joined the man, sitting beside him and ignoring the potential damage to his suit from the film of chemical pollution which seemed everywhere, as well as the basic city filth. He said nothing, waiting for Reeve to fill the void of silence now between them. Eventually, as he had known he would, the brunette engineer spoke.

"...I always thought they were beautiful... I suppose they are in a way, but... they're an ending. Sunsets mean the end. There are too many endings. It makes me feel so powerless. I'm trying my best to clean up the slums and make Midgar a better place, but... I'm fighting a losing battle, let alone the war. I'm one man. What can one man do, against an ending?"

He listened in silence, pausing and considering his response carefully, hiding a smile which threatened despite the seriousness of the conversation. It was nice, sometimes, to spend time in the company of someone who was human like Reeve, who didn't have more addictions than you could count, or wasn't an elective mute, or had touch issues which made butterfly skin pale in comparison. It was nice to spend time with someone who didn't kill and lie and cheat for a living, and who still knew how to feel. He reached for the man's hand, and took it gently in his own, meeting the vulnerable brown eyes with his own, for once unguarded, obsidian ones.

"A sunset may be like the death of the day, Reeve, but it's not an ending. It's part of a cycle of death and rebirth. Every day is a new beginning. Just because the old one has ended, it only means that the new day has so much more to offer, so many opportunities and chances to change history, whether in small ways or large, and for better, or for worse. The night passes, both figuratively, and literally. You do a good job, Reeve, a hard one, but a good one, and you do it well. You do it because you care. Noone else in the entirety of the company could do what you do, Reeve. Don't give up. You're not only the voice of reason, you're the voice of hope, and ShinRa needs that. Midgar needs that."

Reeve was staring at him, his cheeks dusted with pale pink, his mouth moving, but no sound coming out. Tseng only smiled, and gently gripped his chin in one hand. 

"I need that."

He closed the gap between them, brushing his lips over Reeve's own, tasting the engineer gently, and for the first time. The kiss was brief, but still he lingered after he broke away, and gazed into those warm, velvet-brown eyes.

"Don't give up, Reeve. There is always a dawn after sunset."


End file.
